Career

Debuted
The Boondocks
on The Hotlist website, 1996; moved strip to University of
Maryland's college newspaper,
The Diamondback,
1996; switched strip to
The Source,
1997; signed with Universal Press syndicate, and
The Boondocks
began running in newspapers, 1998—; released
Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read The Newspaper,
2000;
Fresh for '01 You Suckas: A Boondocks Collection,
2001;
A Right To Be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury,
2003; coreleased
Birth of A Nation: A Comic Novel,
2004;
Public Enemy
#
2: An All-New Boondocks Collection,
2005; turned comic strip into cartoon, 2005.

Awards:
Chairman Award, National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, 2000.

Sidelights

When Aaron McGruder created
The Boondocks
comic strip, he wanted to shock the masses. Since the strip began, he has
outraged readers, politicians,

Aaron McGruder

even A-list celebrities. The strips printed after the September 11th
terrorist attacks on the United States helped him truly achieve his goal.
With
The Boondocks
also airing as a television show in the fall of 2005, McGruder seems to
be taking his shock to a higher level.

McGruder was born in 1974 in Chicago, Illinois. His parents moved shortly
after he was born, and finally settled in Columbia, Maryland. McGruder and
his brother, Dedric, found themselves living in predominately white
surroundings. His was a typical childhood filled with kung fu movies, rap
music, and video games. He attended a majority-white Jesuit school that
repressed and liberated him. If it was not for the restrictions the school
imposed, he would not have begun using his creativity to deal with the
oppression. He switched to a predominately black high school, and became a
true fan of the rap music of the late 1980s and early 1990s, with groups
that concerned themselves more about raising the consciousness of black
youth. It was during this time that he began to formulate his opinions,
and also turned into an "angry black man," who wanted to
challenge mainstream society's way of thinking in a manner that
would bring about real reform.

After graduating from high school, McGruder began his studies at the
University of Maryland. While he pursued a degree in Afro-American
studies, he began laying the groundwork for
The Boondocks.
The comic strip made its debut on
The Hotlist Online
in 1996. The strip was also run in the University of Maryland's
newspaper,
The Diamondback
. Ironically, the person who is credited for allowing the strip to run in
The Diamondback
is none other than Jayson Blair, the former
New York Times
reporter who was fired for fabricating stories.

Things fell apart between McGruder and the college newspaper, and he
removed his strip.
The Boondocks
was later printed in
The Source,
a magazine geared toward the hip-hop audience. The partnership was short,
but a chance meeting with Harriet Choice of Universal Press Syndicate at
the National Association of Black Journalists Convention proved fruitful.
Universal Press Syndicate had been keeping an eye on the comic strip, so a
deal was made.
The Boondocks
began running in 160 newspapers in late 1998. By February of 1999, the
strip was running in 195 newspapers. As of 2005,
The Boondocks
ran in 250 newspapers.

The premise of
The Boondocks
centered around two children, Huey and Riley Freeman, who moved from the
urban city to the boondocks (slang for the suburbs) and how they and their
neighbors dealt with the transition. Huey, named after Black Panther
co-founder Huey Newton, is a black nationalist who questions authority at
every given chance. Riley, his younger brother, is a young
thug-in-training. The two live with their cantankerous grandfather.
McGruder saw the three main characters as three sides to the angry black
man.

Other characters who appear in the strip include Caesar, a friend of
Huey's, a former Brooklynite who wants to be a rapper; and
neighbors Thomas and Sara Dubois, an interracial couple with a daughter,
Jazmine. Huey tries to help Thomas get in touch with his blackness so he
can help his daughter accept hers. There were also two other characters,
Cindy and Hiro Otomo, but they have all but disappeared.

There was much fanfare when
The Boondocks
first appeared. McGruder was only one of a handful of African-American
cartoonists with strips in major newspapers. The number of
African-American cartoonists in the past was still a paltry few dozen. So,
McGruder was met with praise for this accomplishment alone.
The Boondocks,
which began as a critical, and sometimes, scathing, review of race
relations in America, was also praised for originality. The comic was
drawn in the manga style, a popular Japanese comic form, which also set it
apart from other comic strips. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Joel Pett
told John Nichols of the
Nation
, "I think that not only is [McGruder] doing good stuff, the fact
that he is on the comic pages makes it important in a way that none of the
rest of us could accomplish. He's hooking a whole group of people.
He's getting ideas out to people who don't always read the
opinion pages." No matter how thought provoking the comic strip
was, there were many dissenters. White readers felt the strip made jokes
at their expense. Black readers felt the strip should not air the
race's "dirty laundry." While some newspapers moved
the strip from the comics section to the editorial pages, a few removed
the strip altogether. That did not deter McGruder, who as child, was a fan
of
Doonesbury
and
Bloom County, The Boondock's
comic predecessors. If anything, McGruder upped his shock value; no one
was safe.

In the years after its debut, the strip has poked fun at a wide variety of
people, including President George W. Bush, former presidents Ronald
Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush, the CIA, the FBI, cable
channel BET, the founder of BET and the first African-American billionaire
Robert L. Johnson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Will Smith, Vivica A. Fox, and the
rappers of today whose bling-bling lifestyle he frowns upon. He stated to
the
New Yorker's
Ben Mcgrath, "I've never understood all the obsession over
diamonds and jewelry and designer clothes—that just seems female to
me."

McGruder's criticism of Robert L. Johnson led the billionaire to
take out a two-page ad in
Emerge
magazine, criticizing the cartoonist for not having respect for the
accomplishments of BET and Johnson. McGruder fired back in
The Boondocks,
and expressed to Monica Hogan of
Multichannel News
, "The worst thing about BET is it is taking up space and
preventing another black station from coming along and doing it
right."

He also drew the ire of conservative talk show host Larry Elder who in an
op-ed piece suggested (according to the
New Yorker
) that the award for the "Dumbest, Most Vulgar, Most Offensive
Things Uttered By Black Public Figures" be named the McGruder. Even
the
National Review
wrote a short article condemning the comic strip and its creator in 2005.

But not all of McGruder's foes hate him. He has openly discussed
his hatred of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and told her she was a
mass murderer
when they met while both received awards from the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People. She, however, holds no ill will
toward him and asked him to incorporate her into his comic strip. McGruder
finally obliged in October of 2004, having characters Huey and Caesar
attempt to locate a boyfriend for Rice so she would not destroy the world.

As the comic strip gained in popularity, McGruder was named one of
People
's "25 Most intriguing People" in 1999. He is a
sought-after lecturer, speaking at a variety of places, including college
campuses, conventions, and banquets, though one particular group regretted
having him speak: at the 138th birthday celebration of the left-leaning
political magazine,
The Nation,
he blasted the liberals for not doing enough.

As shocking to readers as
The Boondocks
was, no one was prepared for what was to come in the days and weeks
following the September 11th attacks on the United States. While all of
the editorial cartoonists, left-wing political pundits, comedians, and
even late-night talk show hosts steered clear of attacking the president
as well as questioning the government, McGruder and political dissident
Huey went on a rampage. McGruder noticed that no one was asking the tough
questions, and decided to use his strip to do so, even if it meant the end
of his career. In the strip Huey decried the actions of Bush, the Defense
Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Democrats, and overzealous
patriotic Americans. In one strip, Huey calls the FBI and asks if he can
give the names of Americans who financed terrorists. When the agent says
yes, Huey gives him Ronald Reagan's name.

Though the amount of outrage was huge, only a handful of newspapers
removed the strip, and only for a small amount of time. In October of
2001, McGruder poked fun at the controversy surrounding
The Boondocks
by replacing it with a strip titled "The Adventures of Flagee and
Ribbon." This pseudo-strip's characters were the patriotic
symbols that appeared everywhere after the attacks. Of course, the new
strip was pure satire, poking fun at the fear Americans were feeling and
the enormous surge of patriotism. When "The Adventures of Flagee
and Ribbon" appeared, readers of the
Akron Beacon Journal
in Akron, Ohio, praised the paper for removing
The Boondocks
and replacing it with the new strip.

McGruder and his friend, Reginald Hudlin, director of the popular
House Party
films, teamed up to turn
The Boondocks
into a television show and a motion picture. A deal was made with Sony
Entertainment and episodes of
The Boondocks
were scheduled to began airing in the fall of 2005 during Cartoon
Network's Adult Swim time block. Adult Swim is known to air popular
Japanese anime, including
Inu Yasha, Ghost In The Shell,
and
Cowboy Bebop,
and also satiric shows such as
Family Guy, Space Ghost Coast to Coast,
and
Home Movies
.
The Boondocks
should be a perfect fit, and it would bring the strip and its creator
full circle as Adult Swim's dominant audience is college-age. The
show features the voices of actress Regina King of
Jerry Maguire
and comedian John Witherspoon, who was one of the stars of the film
Friday.

McGruder and Hudlin co-wrote a script about the 2000 presidential election
irregularities, but could not find any takers. They turned the script into
a graphic novel, enlisting the help of artist Kyle Baker.
Birth of A Nation
was released in 2004. In the book, the black citizens of East St. Louis
are denied the right to vote in the presidential elections, the city
decides to secede from the United States and names the new country
Blackland.
Time
stated that new readers "will appreciate [the novel's]
readability. And though it lacks the racial zings of, say, Dave Chappelle,
it manages to land some clever social jabs." While
Booklist
said the book was "highly entertaining,"
Publishers Weekly
panned the novel stating that though the concept was terrific, and the
talent behind it was impressive, there was "not enough
follow-through to make it completely satisfying."

In addition to putting out
The Boondocks
daily, McGruder has released a few collections of the strip:
Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read The Newspaper, Fresh for
'01 You Suckas: A Boondocks Collection, A Right To Be Hostile:
The Boondocks Treasury,
and 2005's
Public Enemy #2: An All-New Boondocks Collection.
He has also overseen the drawing of the television show in Seoul, Korea.
McGruder has begun writing other scripts, and is penning a book,
tentatively titled
Profits of Rage,
and a coffee-table book,
Huey Hate Book
.

Throughout the comic strip's run, McGruder has become ill several
times trying to keep up with the hectic pace. With so many projects in the
air, and his plate overflowing, he turned over the day-today drawing of
The Boondocks,
to a Boston-based artist. The future of the comic strip version of
The Boondocks
is uncertain. However, it is certain that McGruder will not fade into
history, but will continue to provoke America into looking at its societal
ills.

Selected writings

Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read The Newspaper,
Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2000.

User Contributions:

When a person(black/coloured)finally tries to defy society's coformity,it is never well received.
Aaron Mcgruder finally took a small step which ended up being collosal,he paved the way,and so i appreciate the fact that he is a conscious brother.Boondocks has been well received by the masses(even if they never see the bigger picture behind the cartoon)but none the less it truelly is a work of art.I for one feel ashamed of black people when i watch boondocks,it's funny how the slave trade took place years ago, but we still put ourselves in a box.But the potential black people have far surpasses any mantal boundaries.

I watched this ep as the first epsoxure to this series. I'm a white Canadian 20 year old and frankly I have mixed reviews of this show. I love the concept and the comedy is bang on, but the animation and the voice acting screams GI-joe meets fat albert. It's reminicent of an 80 s cartoon with the quality of animation. I know every cartoon gets better in animation with age and I shouldn't be grilling it on the first season, but with kid's shows like Avatar, Naruto and other well-animated features you'd expect a show geared towards animation-loving likeminded adults to have somewhat better quality dialogue and character penciling. Exceptions being any animation with Huey and Riley and any animation with guns. The artists seem to have those all down pat.

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